Monk DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Endwalker 6.4
On this page, you will learn how to optimise your opener and rotation in both single-target and multi-target situations. We also cover the use of your cooldowns, to ensure you can achieve the best use of them every time as a Monk DPS in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (Patch 6.4).
Monk Rotation Overview
Monk's rotation as of Endwalker is quite odd - but also quite even. Our gameplay at level 90 revolves around an odd and an even buff window, with optimization focusing on GCD manipulation to ensure that the highest possible damage is dealt within each window. The core pieces of Monk can be broken down into sections for easier digestion. We have the core of our job - our GCDs, the Chakra system, the Beast Chakra system, and then finally, our burst windows, which combine and condense together everything previously mentioned.
Flowchart
As was touched on before, the core of Monk's single target rotation is effectively a priority-based, decision-making flowchart.
- When in Opo-opo form, do you have Leaden Fist active?
- If yes, use
Bootshine.
- If no, use
Dragon Kick.
- If yes, use
- When in Raptor form, does your Disciplined Fist buff have more than 6
seconds remaining?
- If yes, use
True Strike.
- If no, refresh
Twin Snakes.
- If yes, use
- When in Coeurl form, does your
Demolish have more than 6 seconds remaining?
- If yes, use
Snap Punch.
- If no, refresh
Demolish.
- If yes, use
Chakra
Chakra is a resource that we passively gain throughout fights due to our
Deep Meditation II and
Brotherhood. Using it is
easy - simply use
The Forbidden Chakra as soon as it
becomes available so that you do not overcap Chakra. Overcapping refers to when
you are already at five Chakra and generate another, wasting its potential
potency.
Riddle of Fire, Riddle of Wind, and Brotherhood
Riddle of Fire,
Riddle of Wind and
Brotherhood are our three personal buffs.
Riddle of Wind has less nuance than the other buffs; we simply
press it and start auto-attacking faster, and it does not interact with the rest of
our toolkit much further than that. The best way to use it is to press it on
cooldown, as holding it to align with other buffs will likely result in you
losing entire usages. Only hold it for buffs if you know your killtime, so you
can be sure that you are not going to lose a cast as a result. As for
Riddle of Fire and
Brotherhood, our rotation is
built in such a way to maximize the damage dealt under these buffs. Given the
way our rotation works, the optimal way to use these two skills is to simply
press them on cooldown immediately as they become available. The one slight
caveat to this is that we always want to be weaving
Riddle of Fire late into the GCD roll to ensure it will cover all
11 GCDs.
Brotherhood does not require late-weaving, as its'
placement is for the benefit of the party primarily.
Given that the cooldowns of these skills are 60 and 120 seconds, respectively,
this means that every other Riddle of Fire will be without
Brotherhood. This is what we call the "odd RoF window," and
we always want to put one
Masterful Blitz in this window. It is
called the odd window as it occurs on every odd minute (for example, on minutes 1, 3,
5, and 7).
Likewise, the "even RoF window" happens on every even minute (2, 4, 6, 8,
etc.) and consists of both Riddle of Fire and
Brotherhood. As this is our strongest burst window, we want to
have two uses of
Masterful Blitz here.
Perfect Balance, Beast Chakra, and Nadi
Perfect Balance is the key to some of our strongest skills -
our Blitzes. As mentioned, we always want to be using two Blitzes in our even
windows and one Blitz in our odd window. As for when specifically to use
Perfect Balance in our rotation, as a general rule, you always want
to pop it following an Opo-opo GCD. There are a variety of different
combinations of skills you can use to generate each Blitz, though there are
optimal ways to build up to each one.
Elixir Field requires we use three GCDs from the same form. We want
to choose the Opo-opo form for this, as they are our strongest spammable GCDs.
As such, we would use either
Bootshine →
Dragon Kick →
Bootshine, or
Dragon Kick →
Bootshine →
Dragon Kick, depending on whether or not you have Leaden Fist
going into the
Perfect Balance window.
Rising Phoenix requires three GCDs of unique forms to have been
used: one Opo-opo, one Raptor, and one Coeurl, in any order. As for which GCDs to use
specifically, this depends. The fact that we can use one GCD from each form makes
this a flexible
Perfect Balance sequence. It can be used to
refresh any timers that will be falling off soon, and if there are none, it can be used to
simply press the higher potency GCD from each form.
Phantom Rush will be executed regardless of which Beast Chakra
you have generated, so long as you possess both the Solar and Lunar Nadi. As we
can press any buttons we like, we want to press the ones that do the most
damage. This means that we want to do the
Elixir Field GCD
sequence of three Opo-opo GCDs.
Celestial Revolution is effectively a consolation prize for
when you make a mistake under
Perfect Balance, executed when you
have accumulated only two different types of Beast Chakra. It has a lower potency
than every other blitz while simultaneously being a single-target skill, whereas
all other blitzes are AoE. This skill should never be used intentionally.
Following the use of any Blitz skill, we are granted the Formless Fist buff, which we always want to spend on an Opo-opo GCD.
Openers
Monk has 4 different openers. There is no single opener that is better than the others for every scenario, and the reason we have this many openers is to account for different situations. You will be choosing which opener to use based on party composition, total fight duration (or killtime), and phase duration.
Lunar Solar
The Lunar Solar opener is recommended for most general play for two reasons.
Firstly, it will ensure that you get the maximum potential uses of
Phantom Rush possible throughout an encounter. Secondly,
it facilitates our easier rotation which should be used in a majority of
situations.
If you are unable to double weave without clipping, move Brotherhood
to after the second
Dragon Kick and
Riddle of Wind
until after the second
Bootshine.
- At any point within 30 seconds before pulling, use
Form Shift
Thunderclap as close to 0 on the pull timer as you can without pre-pulling.
Dragon Kick →
Grade 6 Tincture of Strength
Twin Snakes →
Riddle of Fire
Demolish →
The Forbidden Chakra
Bootshine →
Brotherhood →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick →
Riddle of Wind
Bootshine
Dragon Kick
Elixir Field
Bootshine →
Perfect Balance
Twin Snakes
Dragon Kick
Demolish
Rising Phoenix
Double Solar
The Double Solar opener is reserved for more optimized scenarios. This opener
starts by generating two Solar Nadi, hence the name. The reason this is done
is that Phantom Rush is effectively a two-minute cooldown, being
tied to three uses of
Perfect Balance. This means that whichever burst
window you use
Phantom Rush in, odd or even, it will remain
there for the rest of the fight. By generating two Solar Nadi in our opener, we
delay our initial
Phantom Rush cast into our even window, meaning
it is going to be hitting a lot harder than if it were to be used in the odd
window. However, due to the fact that we overcap a Nadi, this can potentially
lose us a use of
Phantom Rush over the course of a fight.
As such, this opener is only recommended for an optimized situation where you can
reasonably estimate your killtime and know that you are not going to lose that
final
Phantom Rush cast by following this opener and rotation.
This opener also effectively scales with your party composition, as having more
two-minute raid buffs in the group facilitate higher DPS compared to other
rotations.
- At any point within 30 seconds before pulling, use
Form Shift
Grade 6 Tincture of Strength immediately before
Thunderclap
Thunderclap as close to 0 on the pull timer as you can without pre-pulling.
Dragon Kick →
Perfect Balance
Twin Snakes →
Riddle of Fire
Demolish →
The Forbidden Chakra
Bootshine →
Brotherhood
Rising Phoenix →
Riddle of Wind
Dragon Kick →
Perfect Balance
Bootshine
Snap Punch
Twin Snakes
Rising Phoenix
Dragon Kick
True Strike
Demolish
Early Openers
There will be situations in encounters where you are forced to use
Riddle of Fire or
Brotherhood in non-optimal ways.
For instance, sometimes there will be downtime, or a boss will go invulnerable
soon after you have used your buffs, which might make you want to hold that
usage until you have a target to hit once again. However, sometimes by holding
that usage, you will end up losing a use of those buffs over the course of an
encounter. This means you have to use them before the downtime and simply accept
the shorter buff window. For these situations, we have the early openers. These
openers skip the Opo-opo GCD at the beginning in favor of starting with
Twin Snakes. This allows us to use our buffs sooner, which means
we get slightly more effective uptime on those buffs before whatever forced
downtime occurs.
Early Lunar Solar
- At any point within 30 seconds before pulling, use
Form Shift
Grade 6 Tincture of Strength immediately before
Thunderclap
Thunderclap as close to 0 on the pull timer as you can without pre-pulling.
Twin Snakes →
Riddle of Fire
Demolish →
The Forbidden Chakra
Dragon Kick →
Brotherhood →
Perfect Balance
Bootshine →
Riddle of Wind
Dragon Kick
Bootshine
Elixir Field
Dragon Kick →
Perfect Balance
Twin Snakes
Bootshine
Demolish
Rising Phoenix
Early Double Solar
- At any point within 30 seconds before pulling, use
Form Shift
Grade 6 Tincture of Strength immediately before
Thunderclap
Thunderclap as close to 0 on the pull timer as you can without pre-pulling.
Twin Snakes →
Riddle of Fire
Demolish →
The Forbidden Chakra
Dragon Kick →
Brotherhood →
Perfect Balance
Bootshine →
Riddle of Wind
True Strike
Snap Punch
Rising Phoenix
Dragon Kick
Perfect Balance
Twin Snakes
Bootshine
Demolish
Rising Phoenix
Rotation Choices
As for what to do following the opener, Monk has three different choices for which rotation to follow - Looping, Optimal Drift, and Double Solar. As always, these rotations all have the same core flowchart gameplay, and the differences between them come about in how they handle their buff windows. If you are just dipping your toes into Monk and want to see how it plays, the Loop is quick and easy to get started with to give you a solid grasp of how the job feels. In order to Loop we make a few rotational compromises in order to generate a somewhat easy-to-follow rotation that repeats every two minutes. This is the lowest DPS option of all three rotations, however it is only about 1% lower than the other options, and so will still allow you to perform at a competitive level. If you decide you want to stick with the job then it is strongly advised to learn Optimal Drift, as it is our most flexible rotation and allows you to adjust on the fly to any situation you may find yourself in. Double Solar is reserved for optimal runs with an ideal killtime (finishing after an even window) and a strong two-minute buff comp. In a solo scenario Double Solar is slightly weaker than Optimal Drift, however it scales better raid buffs.
Which Opener is Best?
There is no one best opener. Each opener is designed to accommodate different scenarios, and the one you should use depends on your kill time. If you are in a situation where you do not know what your kill time will look like, then you should go with Lunar Solar.
Monk Rules
As simple or as challenging as each potential rotation may be, having a level of understanding as to why we do certain things is going to make the learning experience easier. Certain rotations also break some rules, and so it is beneficial to first understand why each rule exists so that you can understand why and when they may need to be broken.
- Always press
Riddle of Fire and
Brotherhood on cooldown. The reason here is twofold; it keeps us aligned with party buffs, and it ensures we do not lose buff uses by drifting. Since our rotation is purpose-built, it is important to play around these 60-second intervals.
Perfect Balance should always be used following an Opo-opo GCD. Opo-opo GCDs are our strongest, and so this maximizes the amount we can use over a fight.
- The Formless Fist acquired following any
Masterful Blitz should always be an Opo-opo GCD. This is for the same reasoning as above.
The Loop
As mentioned previously, the looping rotation makes several compromises in
order to ensure a clean loop, and the first one begins immediately following
the opener. Although the general rule is to always use an Opo-opo GCD following
a Blitz, after the Rising Phoenix in our opener, we will instead
press
Twin Snakes. This sets our rotation back two GCDs to allow for
a clean loop. Following this, continue with the typical Monk flowchart gameplay
until the first
Riddle of Fire window.
Odd windows
Your odd window will be as follows:
Bootshine
True Strike
Demolish
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Snap Punch →
Riddle of Fire
Bootshine
True Strike
Snap Punch
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Bootshine →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick
Bootshine
Dragon Kick
Phantom Rush
Bootshine
Of course, the odd window itself is simply the Riddle of Fire
and everything contained therein, and the skills shown beforehand are there to show
you how we set up our entry to this window. You need not worry about memorizing
the setup, as by following the standard Monk flowchart, your GCDs will naturally
align this way.
As mentioned, this will repeat every odd minute. The only difference is
that each time the Opo-opo GCDs will invert, causing Dragon Kicks to
become
Bootshines and vice-versa.
From here, simply resume the standard flowchart decision-making until the even window.
Even windows
The even window will look as follows:
Snap Punch
Dragon Kick
True Strike
Snap Punch
Bootshine →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick →
Riddle of Fire
Demolish
Twin Snakes →
Brotherhood
Rising Phoenix
Bootshine →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick
Bootshine
Dragon Kick
Elixir Field
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Bootshine
Same as before, this will be how all of your even windows look, with the one
exception being that the Opo-opo GCDs will invert. You may also notice that
much like the opener, following the Rising Phoenix we use
Twin Snakes instead of following the rule of always Opo-opo. This
serves the same purpose as when it is done in the opener, allowing the rotation
to cleanly loop.
Fixing the Loop
Up until this point, we have been talking about the looping rotation in a full uptime, combat dummy scenario. In that imaginary scenario, this rotation repeats itself cleanly, forever. Real fights generally do not allow for this, so what do we do when our rotation gets misaligned?
There are three different ways in which our rotation can be misaligned.
First is the timer of our Disciplined Fist buff. This is effectively
irrelevant. As long as you make sure you are always putting a
Twin Snakes before the
Demolish in the odd window,
this fixes itself - yes, even if it will clip your buff early. This is a total
non-issue in the even window given that we use a
Twin Snakes
in the first
Perfect Balance window, again fixing itself.
The second way we can be misaligned is relative to our
Demolish timer. This is primarily a concern to us in the odd
window, as in the even window, you simply repeat the same thing every time, even
if it would cause your dot to clip. Of course, this does mean that since it
fixes itself on the even window, you could merely just keep playing, clip on the
even window, and then go into the next cycle of the loop fresh. However, there
is a way that we can fix this without having to eat the DPS loss of waiting
until our even window comes back around.
The way that we fix this is by essentially learning all nine different places
Demolish can come up relative to
Riddle of Fire,
in addition to understanding how to handle each situation. At first, this might seem like it
will be a lot to learn, but in reality, it is quite simple as we can solve this
issue by cross-referencing a few rules against our knowledge of the job.
Before executing an Opo sequence Perfect Balance window, we
always want to have refreshed our
Twin Snakes and
Demolish beforehand such that they do not fall off mid-burst.
This means that we are looking for a natural
Demolish to build
our
Perfect Balance sequence around. When executing our normal
rotation, a
Demolish will naturally happen once every 9 GCDs.
This means that we are guaranteed to have a natural
Demolish that
we can use to build our burst off of somewhere around
Riddle of Fire. But how do we know which nine GCDs to look at? Well,
consider the fact that after pressing
Perfect Balance, it takes four
GCDs to get to our Blitz. This means that we can use
Perfect Balance no later than seven GCDs into
Riddle of Fire, else our Blitz will fall out of our buff window.
Since we want to
Perfect Balance after an Opo-opo GCD, this means
that the very latest usable
Demolish can occur six GCDs into
Riddle of Fire. From this, we have identified the nine GCDs we need to
be looking at - anywhere from three GCDs before, or six GCDs into, our
Riddle of Fire. Once we have located where in those nine GCDs our
natural
Demolish refresh is, we know that we need to force the
Raptor GCD before it to be a
Twin Snakes, even if it clips the
buff slightly. Once this has been completed, you have fixed your odd windows,
and can simply
Demolish → Opo-Opo GCD →
Perfect Balance → Opo-Opo GCD → Opo-Opo GCD →
Opo-Opo GCD →
Phantom Rush. Although this means
sometimes you may have to use
Perfect Balance slightly before
Riddle of Fire is available, this is completely fine as your
Phantom Rush will still be within the buff window, in addition to a
later
Demolish refresh.
The misalignment we can face is our Form-to-RoF CD alignment. This is when we
end up in the wrong form as Riddle of Fire is coming off of
cooldown. Thankfully, if you understand how to fix
Demolish
alignment, then you can apply the same rules here to know which
Demolish to build your burst off of odd windows. Even
windows are much simpler, effectively fixing themselves by merit of being
linked to a
Perfect Balance use.
Optimal Drift
This rotation is named Optimal Drift as it is a more optimal way of playing
than the loop, and your Riddle of Fire entry form drifts back by one
every two minutes. Like the looping rotation, Optimal Drift begins with a Lunar
Solar opener, but the similarities end there. As opposed to having repeating
burst sequences, this rotation instead has variable windows depending on how
your GCDs align leading up to
Riddle of Fire.
Odd Windows
The way that we build our odd windows when doing this rotation is effectively
the same as the way you fix the loop being misaligned relative to a
Demolish timer. Since we are not looping, our entry to odd
windows can consist of any possible GCD alignment. This effectively means
that every odd window needs to be "fixed," so by applying the rules learned
previously, you will be able to execute any possible odd window alignment that
may occur.
Even Windows
The even windows in this rotation are where the real difference comes in.
Much the same as how we build odd windows from a Demolish,
we build our even windows from any Coeurl GCD. We split hairs further than
simply considering a
Demolish vs a
Snap Punch
however. Between each
Demolish application, we have two uses of
Snap Punch, and each one results in a different overall GCD
alignment. This means that each
Snap Punch is treated as a unique
GCD, as each
Snap Punch leads to a different even window
sequence. To distinguish between each window, the GCDs will be referred to as
Demo, Snap 1, and Snap 2. With this distinction outlined, we can look at how
each potential burst window is constructed.
Similarly to odd windows, we consider the fact that we need to fit two
Perfect Balance uses and their respective Blitzes in this
Riddle of Fire window. Again, this means that we are looking at the
same three-GCD window around
Riddle of Fire to determine what burst
sequence we should follow: the two GCDs prior to, and the one GCD following
Riddle of Fire. Depending on which of our three possible Coeurl
GCDs falls into this window, there are three different potential burst sequences
that we will end up doing.
RoF+BH 1
Demolish
- Opo
- Raptor
- Snap 1
- Opo
- Raptor →
Riddle of Fire
- Snap 2 →
Riddle of Fire
- Opo →
Perfect Balance →
Riddle of Fire
- Opo
Demolish
Twin Snakes
Rising Phoenix
- Opo →
Perfect Balance
- Opo
- Opo
- Opo
Elixir Field
- Opo
RoF+BH 2
- Snap 2
- Opo
- Raptor
Demolish
- Opo →
Perfect Balance
- Raptor →
Riddle of Fire
- Snap 1 →
Riddle of Fire
- Opo →
Riddle of Fire
Rising Phoenix
- Opo
Twin Snakes
Demolish
- Opo →
Perfect Balance
- Opo
- Opo
- Opo
Elixir Field
- Opo
RoF+BH 3
- Snap 1
- Opo
- Raptor
- Snap 2
- Opo
Twin Snakes →
Riddle of Fire
Demolish →
Riddle of Fire
- Opo →
Perfect Balance →
Riddle of Fire
- Opo
- Opo
- Opo
Elixir Field
- Opo →
Perfect Balance
Twin Snakes
- Opo
Demolish
Rising Phoenix
- Opo
Note that there are three instances of Riddle of Fire in each
window. This is because
Riddle of Fire can occur on any of those
three possible GCDs, not because you need to somehow use the buff three times.
GCDs simply labeled "Opo" or "Raptor" can be either of the two available GCDs
in those forms, depending on how your rotation has aligned by following the
standard Monk gameplay loop. GCDs that are specified by name are not
flexible. Brotherhood is not listed as its placement is
irrelevant - as long as you are using it on cooldown, it will always be in the
correct place.
The most practical way to learn how to recognize and execute the correct
window is to check what Coeurl GCD you are using when the cooldown of
Riddle of Fire is between 21.34 - 15.52 seconds. This is because
whatever Coeurl GCD you use in this window, you will be using again in nine GCDs,
which is the three-GCD window we are looking for. This allows you to prepare in
advance. If the Coeurl GCD in this window is
Demolish, you will
be doing RoF + BH 3. If it is Snap 1, you will be doing RoF+BH 2, and if it is
Snap 2, then you will be doing RoF + BH 1.
In a full uptime scenario, RoF + BH 3 should not occur. The most effective
way to practice this rotation and make sure you are actually understanding the
principles behind it (as opposed to just developing good muscle memory) is to
practice on a dummy and randomly insert Six-sided Star to test
how well you can identify the correct windows.
Double Solar
The Double Solar rotation is an optimized rotation that follows the Double
Solar opener. This rotation is optimized around pushing
Phantom Rush back into even buff windows, and as such scales
better the more two-minute raid buffs you have in your party, provided you do not
lose a total usage of
Phantom Rush over the course of an
encounter.
Odd Windows
The odd windows for this rotation are constructed in the exact same way as in the optimal drift rotation.
Even Windows
Even windows for this rotation are constructed in a somewhat similar way to
the Optimal Drift rotation. Again, we are looking for the Coeurl GCD that is
happening in the window two GCDs prior to or one GCD following
Riddle of Fire, but instead of accounting for which specific Coeurl
GCD it is, we simply force it to become a
Demolish, even if that
means clipping your dot early. Given a full uptime scenario, this only causes
six seconds worth of clipping every six minutes, which is well worth the DPS we
are able to gain as a result of this slight clip. Similar again to what has
previously been discussed, the Raptor GCD before this
Demolish
should always be a
Twin Snakes, even if that means clipping the
buff slightly early. Once you have identified the correct Coeurl GCD and forced
the
Twin Snakes →
Demolish, the rest of your
burst window practically plays itself, as all that is left to do is use your
Perfect Balance charges.
Twin Snakes
Demolish
- Opo →
Perfect Balance
- Opo
- Opo
- Opo
Phantom Rush
- Opo →
Perfect Balance
Twin Snakes
- Opo
Demolish
Rising Phoenix
The resultant GCD sequence will look like this. The placement of
Riddle of Fire simply depends on where in relation to
Riddle of Fire your forced
Demolish is.
Additional Monk Concepts
Six-Sided Star Use
Six-sided Star is acquired at level 80 and has no related form,
so it can be used whenever. This is a utility skill rather than something to be
incorporated into a set rotation - while it has a potency of 550, its recast
timer is double that of every other GCD, and doing any combination of two other
GCDs amounts to more than 550 potency. Where
Six-sided Star finds
use is in situations where we are unable to do two GCDs, making the long recast
irrelevant. As such,
Six-sided Star can be used as the final GCD
before an enemy either dies or goes untargetable, before casting Limit
Break, or before having to disengage due to ground AoEs. To aid us in this
latter use, Six-sided Star provides a small boost to our move speed for
five seconds after use.
Brotherhood Chakra Delay
Chakra delay is a finer detail of Monk, but nonetheless is worth being aware
of. As you will know, Brotherhood guarantees a Chakra
generation upon weaponskill execution. It does not grant you this Chakra
instantly, however. The Chakra is gained upon damage application. The reason
this is somewhat awkward is that not all GCDs are created equally, and some
weaponskills have much longer damage applications than others. As an example,
Demolish does not apply the damage until 1.604
seconds after you have pressed the button. This means you will not gain a
Chakra from Demolish until the very end of your GCD roll. This causes issues in
situations where you have four Chakra ready, and your next GCD is a
Demolish. The Chakra gained from this will come up too late to
spend, and so you will be unable to use
The Forbidden Chakra until
after your following weaponskill. This means that you have just overcapped one
Chakra from yourself, alongside however many Chakra you potentially gained
from your party members. There is not really anything that we can do to fix this
problem, but nonetheless I believe that there is value in knowing exactly how
the tools of your job work.
Double Weaving
Unfortunately, due to the fast GCD of Monk, double weaving is effectively impossible unless you have single-digit ping. This presents a problem as there will be scenarios that force you to double weave to avoid drifting buffs. Thankfully, there is a third-party program we can use to mitigate this issue - XIVAlexander. XIVAlexander works by effectively simulating a low ping environment by shaving off some of the animation lock certain skills have. While this is incredibly useful and evens out the playing field for those of us with worse ping, it is still a third party program and so should not be discussed in game. While there are no known bans of users who simply use this tool in a responsible manner (as it is not detectable unless modified to an extreme), I would still stress that you use it at your own discretion.
Triple Blitzing
Triple Blitz windows rely upon long periods of downtime in order to leverage
the 20 second durations of both Perfect Balance and
Masterful Blitz in order to charge up a Blitz, and then hold onto
it until your next
Riddle of Fire window whereby the 40 second
cooldown of
Perfect Balance will have refreshed, netting you an
additional buffed blitz at no cost. This is doable due to the fact that our
AoE skills will generate a Beast Chakra even if they do not hit any targets, and
so can be used in downtime. This is not something that is going to come up very
frequently, as there are not many fights that have long enough downtime to
accommodate something like this. You are most likely to be able to do this in
Ultimate fights due to their tendency to have large chunks of downtime.
There are two different potential triple blitz entries depending on which rotation you are using.
Optimal Drift
Given that you enter this window with no stored Nadi, you have options on
how you wish to structure this window. You can start with either
Elixir Field or
Rising Phoenix, and depending on
which you do the rest of the window will have to change to accommodate your
choice. As for which one is better; it depends.
Demolish
placement will be different depending on which window you choose, either
clipping or falling off, which results in all subsequent Demolish uses being in
different places in each burst window. This means that phase timing can push
one option ahead of the other in terms of DPS, and so you should account for
this when making your decision. Below are two potential reopener sequences;
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Bootshine →
Riddle of Fire
Elixir Field
Dragon Kick →
Perfect Balance
Bootshine
Demolish
Twin Snakes
Rising Phoenix
Dragon Kick →
Perfect Balance
Bootshine
Dragon Kick
Bootshine
Phantom Rush
Dragon Kick
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Bootshine →
Riddle of Fire
Rising Phoenix
Twin Snakes →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick
Bootshine
Dragon Kick
Elixir Field
Bootshine →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Phantom Rush
Bootshine
Following on from this your rotation is going to have to change in order to
accommodate your new Nadi alignment, as you will enter even windows with a
single Lunar nadi. This means subsequent Even windows will become an Optimal
Drift/Double Solar hybrid, whereby you need to always be doing
Rising Phoenix →
Phantom Rush. This is
going to start off fine as it sets you up to go into RoF+BH 1 windows, however
will get a little awkward as you start to hit RoF+BH 3s. That being said, with
such a niché optimisation as this you should really be planning out your
entire rotation ahead of time anyway, and as such will need to come up with your
own solutions to any problems that may arise as a result.
Double Solar
Given that you being with a Lunar nadi, you are relatively locked in as to how the rest of the window needs to be sequenced.
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Bootshine →
Riddle of Fire
Rising Phoenix
Twin Snakes →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick
Bootshine
Dragon Kick
Phantom Rush
Bootshine →
Perfect Balance
Dragon Kick
Twin Snakes
Demolish
Rising Phoenix
Bootshine
As usual, this is much simpler than the choices Optimal Drift has.
A few key points to keep in mind regardless of the route you may end up going
choosing to follow when attempting a triple blitz window is that it starts quite
late relative to other jobs reopeners. As such you may have to modify your burst
in order to better catch your groups timings and have the ability to place
Brotherhood at a better time for your party. This could mean
possibly doing an early reopener variant, which would involve starting on
Twin Snakes and inverting all of the following Opo GCDs. To
reiterate, given the specific conditions required to pull off a triple blitz
window it will be incredibly rare you find opportunities to actually implement
this technique, and given the particular nature of these windows each will most
likely require some additional fine tuning or planning in order to account for
the specific counter therein. There will be no universal solution to the ways
that these windows may occur in real encounters, and so will require meticulous
planning if you want to squeeze out the absolute most potency possible.
FPS Locking
Our FPS matters when it comes to our GCD speed, as the game waits until the next frame is rendered after your GCD is up to execute the action you currently have queued. What this means in practice is that the GCD the game shows on your tooltip may not necessarily be accurate, resulting in a potential loss of GCDs over a large span of time. Given a consistent frame rate, your effective GCD including FPS may be calculated via GCD+((1-GCD*FPS) mod 1)*1/FPS, where "GCD" is the GCD speed shown on your in-game tooltips, "FPS" is your framerate, and "mod" indicates the usage of the modulo operation. This is easier to understand by graphing the results of this for a given tooltip GCD. The graph for a 1.96 tooltip GCD looks as follows;

As you can see, there are clearly certain framerates that are preferable to others. Each dip in the graph represents your effective GCD speed accounting for FPS being as close as possible to the advertised tooltip GCD, which occurs every 1+50n FPS where n is an integer, for example, 1FPS, 51 FPS, 101 FPS, etc.
At Monk's ideal GCD speed of 1.94, the rotation drifts slightly as you are
forced to hold Riddle of Fire briefly in order to accommodate the
late weave slot. This can be mitigated somewhat via third-party software that
will minimize the amount of required
Riddle of Fire drift in order
to retain our ideal late-weave spot while simultaneously minimizing how much we
drift out of our teams' 60/120s raid buffs. Both the ReAction plugin available
via Quicklauncher and XIVAlexander have FPS aligning functionality, which will
save you having to use something like Rivatuner to lock your FPS to a specific
number.
To offer a simplified explanation of the problem, the GCD speed shown in-game
is not strictly accurate, being variably slower based on your frame rate. For
example, if your game displays a 1.94 GCD, but you play at 60 FPS, your actual
GCD is closer to 1.95; as a result of this, after 106 GCDs (or roughly 206
seconds) you would be a full GCD behind someone who was playing at 1.94 but had
an optimal frame rate. At the same, you can also suffer even when not a full GCD
behind. With regards to end of fight/phase scenarios, if you were for example
1/3 of a GCD ahead, for randomly distributed encounter durations you would lose
a full GCD in one in three of those. This is also not the only place where losses can
occur due to frame rate; again, assuming 1.94 GCD 60 FPS, you would lose out on
buff alignment over the course of a fight as you would be forced to slightly
hold Riddle of Fire on each use in order to late-weave it,
gradually pushing you further and further out of raid buffs.
Locking your frame rate at specific values via Rivatuner or using the FPS functionality of either ReAction or XIVAlexander mitigates these issues by aligning your GCD with your framerate as closely as possible such that you have minimized wait times before queued actions are executed. Please note again that third-party tools are to be used at your own discretion.
What is the point of Celestial Revolution?
Celestial Revolution is strictly a consolation prize for when
you make a mistake during
Perfect Balance and should never be used
intentionally.
Changelog
- 24 May 2023: Updated for 6.4.
- 13 Jan. 2023: Up-to-date for Patch 6.3
- 20 Apr. 2022: Updated for Patch 6.1
- 24 Mar. 2022: Youtube embeds for dummy rotation videos added, triple blitz added
- 07 Jan. 2022: FPS information added.
- 05 Jan. 2022: Optimal Drift Even Window description fixed.
- 31 Dec. 2021: Guide added.
Guides from Other Classes
"This Monk guide has been brought to you by Perfect Balance, a primordial being who has been playing Monk since the A Realm Reborn beta. A self-described "okay button pusher" recognised by many as being "bearable in small doses", PB is keen to make Monk more accessible to the general playerbase, with the main goal being to convey job nuance and intricacies in a digestible way. He streams raids live on Twitch and has a YouTube channel, where he uploads Monk PoVs and fight specific advice.
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